Spring at Roble has marked a pivotal season of founder-focused engagement, with the entire team headquartered in-person in San Francisco throughout March and April.
We’ve worked alongside our founders in South Park Commons, delivered high-value programming in the Financial District, and leveraged our GP’s well-loved Stanford GSE class to strengthen our commitment to being active, accessible partners deeply embedded in our founders’ entrepreneurial journeys.
Our dedication to our portfolio companies was recently highlighted in an Affinity case study, showcasing our VC OS and investment in systems for scaling our impact for founders.
We are also honored to announce that Roble Ventures has been selected to present at or attend exclusive industry gatherings such as the SomosVC Emerging Manager Showcase, Allocate’s Beyond Summit, and the Bridge Flagship Summit.
If you’ll be at any of these events in the coming weeks, reach out so we can connect in-person.
The Latest From Our Founders
PORTFOLIO NEWS AND UPDATES
Teachy was named as one of 2024’s most disruptive MBA startups by Poets&Quants; the AI-enabled workspace has helped more than 500,000 teachers in developing economies build better lessons 10x faster.
Hyperbound’s team is continuing to expand, looking to bring on two more Founding Product/Full-Stack Engineers for their salestech platform after recently welcoming their founding AE, Isaac Hong.
Remyx co-founder Salma Mayorquin demonstrated their platform’s agile AI engineering capabilities at an event at Github headquarters.
Brendan and Cherie at Holly joined The Impact Agenda to discuss building for public servants and how their experiences in the public sector exposed them to critical bottlenecks to improving service quality at the state and local level.
They also recently partnered with San Bernardino County, the largest county in the continental U.S., to create competitive jobs driven by timely market data.
Lens Into a Human-Enabled Future
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP HIGHLIGHTS
Sergio kicked off his annual spring Stanford course on innovation in edtech, which teaches the seven crucial elements of startup diligence.
So far, guest speakers have included Matt Glickman (BabyCenter, NovoEd, Merced) and one of our own portfolio founders, Pedro Siciliano of Teachy, to give invaluable insights on how to find and serve your ideal customer.
While the entire Roble team was in San Francisco from March-April, we hosted an event called Code & Capital that brought together over 70 early-stage investors and technical startup founders (or prospective founders) at Finix HQ downtown.
We were truly stunned by the turnout and enjoyed meeting everyone who dropped by!
Emily took the stage alongside Affinity at the annual VC Platform Summit in Miami to talk about Roble’s VC OS and the importance of scalable relationship intelligence, customer service, and tech enablement in staying competitive in today’s landscape.
Our partnership with Affinity was also showcased in a case study & video essay on the platform’s website:
Lastly, we have two interns joining the Roble team this summer as part of our inaugural Roble Rise program, which seeks to create access in venture capital by exposing high-performing undergraduate students to projects in portfolio support, dealmaking, and professional development.
Our two Summer 2025 interns are Noely Irineu Silva and another student who would like to remain unnamed, both of whom are rising juniors at Wellesley College.
What Keeps Us Up at Night
KEY RISK FACTORS
By Sergio Monsalve
The current macroeconomic and political landscape has everyone on edge—from founders to LPs to our fellow VCs. In my conversations with investors over the past few weeks, one theme keeps surfacing: anxiety about how trade tensions will impact both our portfolio companies and the broader market.
While short-term volatility seems inevitable, I'm cautiously optimistic about the medium to long-term outlook. My optimism rests on two key assumptions:
- The administration's focus on trade fairness rather than isolation. Despite aggressive rhetoric, the goal appears to be renegotiation rather than economic isolation. History suggests this approach aligns with a particular kind of negotiation philosophy that makes bold, upfront demands to secure more favorable final terms.
- Recognition that deficit reduction is critical for long-term economic health. While painful in the near term, addressing trade imbalances could strengthen our economic foundation over time.
What should we watch for?
The most encouraging signal would be headlines about negotiations advancing between the US and its trading partners, especially China. This would indicate movement away from confrontation toward resolution, potentially within the next two quarters.
Conversely, the most concerning signal involves China's stronghold on rare earth metals and other critical technology components. As tensions escalate, this leverage point bears close watching, particularly for those investing in hardware and advanced technologies.
Our world of software both for consumers and enterprises is less directly affected, although if supply chains get disrupted for companies like NVDA, then all tech will suffer. For a sense of what it would be like to have disrupted supply chains, refer back to the COVID-19 pandemic (though not a perfect example due to differences around consumer behavior disruption).
The US dollar's enduring strength
Despite current anxieties, it's worth remembering the dollar's entrenched position in global finance:
- The dollar accounts for nearly 60% of global reserves
- Approximately 40-50% of global trade is invoiced in USD
- Almost 90% of foreign exchange trades involve the dollar
- Over 60% of international debt is denominated in USD
Even with the current upheaval, foreign investors still face significant barriers to moving away from US markets or the dollar itself.
As with any situation beyond our control, there are two ways to interpret current events: either as a fundamental realignment of global economic power or as tactical maneuvering to secure better terms for the U.S. Based on historical patterns and current signals, I'm inclined toward the latter interpretation—though we're preparing our portfolio for either scenario.
What Caught Our Attention
NEWS AND RESOURCES
David continued his weekly AI newsletter, "This Week in AI and Cloud Software."
About the author
Roble Ventures is a future-of-work focused fund investing in technologies that enable people, teams, and organizations to achieve their most ambitious work.
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